Sister time

Cricket's sister's visit was mostly fun and quite interesting.  At sibling visits, they were pretty attached at the hip, much more than a 2-year-old and a 7-year-old would usually be.  I wasn't sure how it would go at our house, especially with the two boys thrown into the mix.  Dinosaur's personality can be overwhelming for some kids (has a hard time turning off the silly and tuning into other people), but she seemed to take it in stride and they actually got along really well.  Rhinoceros seemed a bit lost as Cricket wasn't playing her usual games with him, but we found a few things they all played together: playing in the snow, painting snow in containers inside, play-doh, hitting balloons around, drawing with markers.


We've never had a school-aged child stay at our house without their parents there.  Cricket's sister had lots of questions about our house, stuff we were driving by, our family, etc.  She talked about her mom in ways that Cricket doesn't, saying what her mom does with them, telling lighthearted stories of how her mom reacted to things that Cricket did.  She was a candid and energetic, generally fun to have as a part of our family for a day.


But the most interesting thing was to watch Cricket around her.  Cricket takes charge of the kids in our house.  That doesn't mean she always gets her way, but she puts a lot of energy in to seeing if she can get things her way in a sibling situation.  Her sister, however, shuts her down.  I saw her stop mid-protest because her sister was talking!  Unheard of here, seriously.  They even went to bed quietly, with only a few murmurs and whispers to each other before they fell asleep.


Cricket didn't cling to her sister as much as I thought she would, except for when I tried to separate them for a nap as her sister had no interest in lying down mid-afternoon.  That was a NO. GO. for Cricket, triggering abandonment and separation issues and probably shouldn't have been attempted.  But she did go to her sister asking to be picked up as she asks me to pick her up, and she called for her to help wipe in the bathroom.  I tried to tell her that wiping is not her sister's job, that it's hers or a grown-up's.  We also weren't sure if we should bring them all to church, as it felt odd to have Cricket's sister overnight then go to church just to separate her from her sister.  But church on Sundays is a part of her routine, and she brought a dress and asked about it right away.  She seemed comfortable with the idea, and I was pretty sure our church would make her feel at home, so we went for it. 


Cricket has a birthday this month, and I learned yesterday her sister does as well, so we're trying to work out a joint birthday thing for the siblings.  And then, not too long after that hopefully, they'll be living together again and not scrambling to get together among the siblings' three different families.